This project was an 18-month long research-practitioner
partnership to conduct a process evaluation of the State College
Police Department's implementation of a grant to encourage arrest
policies for domestic violence. The general goals of the process
evaluation were to assess how and to what extent the State College
Police Department's proposed activities were implemented as planned,
based on the rationale that such activities would enhance the
potential for increasing victim safety and perpetrator accountability
systemically. As part of the grant, the police department sought to
improve case tracking and services to victims by developing new
specialized positions for domestic violence, including: (1) a domestic
violence arrest coordinator from within the State College Police
Department who was responsible for monitoring case outcomes through
the courts and updating domestic violence policies and training (Part
1, Victim Tracking Data from Domestic Violence Coordinator), (2) a
victims service attorney from Legal Services who was responsible for
handling civil law issues for domestic violence victims, including
support, child custody, employment, financial, consumer, public
benefits, and housing issues (Part 2, Victim Tracking Data From Victim
Services Attorney), and (3) an intensive domestic violence probation
officer from the Centre County Probation and Parole Department who was
responsible for providing close supervision and follow-up of batterers
(Part 3, Offender Tracking Data). Researchers worked with
practitioners to develop databases suitable for monitoring service
provision by the three newly-created positions for domestic violence
cases. Major categories of data collected on the victim tracking form
(Parts 1 and 2) included location of initial contact, type of initial
contact, referral source, reason for initial contact,
service/consultation provided at initial contact, meetings, and
referrals out. Types of services provided include reporting abuse,
filing a Protection from Abuse order, legal representation, and
assistance with court procedures. Major categories of data collected
on the offender tracking form (Part 3) included location of initial
contact, type of initial contact, referral source, reason for initial
contact, service/consultation provided, charges, sentence received,
relationship between the victim and perpetrator, marital status,
children in the home, referrals out, presentencing investigation
completed, prior criminal history, and reason for termination. Types
of services provided include pre-sentence investigation, placement on
supervision, and assessment and evaluation. In addition to developing
these new positions, the police department also sought to improve how
officers handled domestic violence cases through a two-day training
program. The evaluation conducted pre- and post-training assessments
of all personnel training in 1999 and conducted follow-up surveys to
assess the long-term impact of training. For Part 4, Police Training
Survey Data, surveys were administered to law enforcement personnel
participating in a two-day domestic violence training program. Surveys
were administered both before and after the training program and
focused on knowledge about domestic violence policies and protocols,
attitudes and beliefs about domestic violence, and the background and
experience of the officers. Within six months after the training, the
same participants were contacted to complete a follow-up survey.
Variables in Part 4 measure how well officers knew domestic violence
arrest policies, their attitudes toward abused women and how to handle
domestic violence cases, and their opinions about
training. Demographic variables in Part 4 include age, sex, race,
education, and years in law enforcement.

This project was an 18-month long research-practitioner
partnership to conduct a process evaluation of the State College
Police Department's implementation of a grant to encourage arrest
policies for domestic violence. The general goals of the process
evaluation were to assess how and to what extent the State College
Police Department's proposed activities were implemented as planned,
based on the rationale that such activities would enhance the
potential for increasing victim safety and perpetrator accountability
systemically. As part of the grant, the police department sought to
improve case tracking and services to victims by developing new
specialized positions for domestic violence, including: (1) a domestic
violence arrest coordinator from within the State College Police
Department who was responsible for monitoring case outcomes through
the courts and updating domestic violence policies and training (Part
1, Victim Tracking Data from Domestic Violence Coordinator), (2) a
victims service attorney from Legal Services who was responsible for
handling civil law issues for domestic violence victims, including
support, child custody, employment, financial, consumer, public
benefits, and housing issues (Part 2, Victim Tracking Data From Victim
Services Attorney), and (3) an intensive domestic violence probation
officer from the Centre County Probation and Parole Department who was
responsible for providing close supervision and follow-up of batterers
(Part 3, Offender Tracking Data). Researchers worked with
practitioners to develop databases suitable for monitoring service
provision by the three newly-created positions for domestic violence
cases. Major categories of data collected on the victim tracking form
(Parts 1 and 2) included location of initial contact, type of initial
contact, referral source, reason for initial contact,
service/consultation provided at initial contact, meetings, and
referrals out. Types of services provided include reporting abuse,
filing a Protection from Abuse order, legal representation, and
assistance with court procedures. Major categories of data collected
on the offender tracking form (Part 3) included location of initial
contact, type of initial contact, referral source, reason for initial
contact, service/consultation provided, charges, sentence received,
relationship between the victim and perpetrator, marital status,
children in the home, referrals out, presentencing investigation
completed, prior criminal history, and reason for termination. Types
of services provided include pre-sentence investigation, placement on
supervision, and assessment and evaluation. In addition to developing
these new positions, the police department also sought to improve how
officers handled domestic violence cases through a two-day training
program. The evaluation conducted pre- and post-training assessments
of all personnel training in 1999 and conducted follow-up surveys to
assess the long-term impact of training. For Part 4, Police Training
Survey Data, surveys were administered to law enforcement personnel
participating in a two-day domestic violence training program. Surveys
were administered both before and after the training program and
focused on knowledge about domestic violence policies and protocols,
attitudes and beliefs about domestic violence, and the background and
experience of the officers. Within six months after the training, the
same participants were contacted to complete a follow-up survey.
Variables in Part 4 measure how well officers knew domestic violence
arrest policies, their attitudes toward abused women and how to handle
domestic violence cases, and their opinions about
training. Demographic variables in Part 4 include age, sex, race,
education, and years in law enforcement.

Guidelines for Applying for Restricted Data

Before you begin an application you will need the following information to complete the form

General Requirements:

appointment at research institution; appointment must be under the jurisdiction of the receiving institution

degree requirements (possibly doctorate)

Must be submitted:

project description

IRB approval

approved security plan

roster of research and IT staff who can access or view the data or computer where data are hosted.

confidentiality pledges for all people on roster

Some require:

CV's

Access to these data is restricted. Users interested in obtaining these data must complete a Restricted Data Use Agreement, specify the reasons for the request, and obtain IRB approval or notice of exemption for their research.

Any public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public.
Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

Universe:
Parts 1-3: All domestic violence victims and offenders in
State College, Pennsylvania, between 1999 and 2000. Part 4: All law
enforcement officers participating in domestic violence training from
the State College Police Department in 1999.

Data Type(s):
event/transaction data, and survey data

Data Collection Notes:

(1) The data available in this collection are part of
a broader evaluation project. Other components of the evaluation that
are not available through this data collection include the evaluation
of a fourth newly-created position (safety auditor coordinator),
tracking time spent on various activities by the newly-created
positions, and a survey of non-law enforcement personnel who
participated in the domestic violence training program. Users are
strongly encouraged to obtain the Final Report for this project in
order to understand the entire process evaluation. (2) The user guide,
codebook, and data collection instruments are provided by ICPSR as
Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The PDF file format was
developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be accessed using PDF
reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat Reader. Information on how
to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is provided on the ICPSR Web
site.

Methodology

Study Purpose:
This project was an 18-month long
research-practitioner partnership to conduct a process evaluation of
the State College Police Department's implementation of a grant to
encourage arrest policies for domestic violence. As part of this
grant, the police department sought to improve case tracking and
services to victims by developing new specialized positions for
domestic violence, including: (1) a domestic violence arrest
coordinator from within the State College Police Department who was
responsible for monitoring case outcomes through the courts and
updating domestic violence policies and training, (2) a victims
service attorney from Legal Services who was responsible for handling
civil law issues for domestic violence victims, including support,
child custody, employment, financial, consumer, public benefits, and
housing issues, and (3) an intensive domestic violence probation
officer from the Centre County Probation and Parole Department who was
responsible for providing close supervision and follow-up of
batterers. Researchers worked with practitioners to assess the
development of newly-created positions to better serve domestic
violence victims, evaluate performance of personnel in these
positions, and examine activities associated with the development of a
systemwide, inter-agency database. In addition to the development of
these new positions, the police department also sought to improve how
officers handled domestic violence cases through a two-day training
program. The evaluation conducted pre- and post-training assessments
of all personnel training in 1999 and conducted follow-up surveys to
assess the long-term impact of training. The general goals of the
process evaluation were to assess how and to what extent the State
College Police Department's proposed activities were implemented as
planned, based on the rationale that such activities would enhance the
potential for increasing victim safety and perpetrator accountability
systemically. However, this evaluation, as a process model, was not
designed to test whether the proposed activities actually increased
victim safety and perpetrator accountability (which would be
appropriate goals in an impact evaluation).

Study Design:
Researchers worked with practitioners to develop
databases suitable for monitoring service provision by the three
newly-created positions for domestic violence cases. Major categories
of data collected on the victim tracking form (Parts 1 and 2) included
location of initial contact, type of initial contact, referral source,
reason for initial contact, service/ consultation provided at initial
contact, meetings, and referrals out. Major categories of data
collected on the offender tracking form (Part 3) included location of
initial contact, type of initial contact, referral source, reason for
initial contact, service/consultation provided, charges, sentence
received, relationship between the victim and perpetrator, marital
status, children in the home, referrals out, presentencing
investigation completed, prior criminal history, and reason for
termination. For Part 4, surveys were administered to law enforcement
personnel participating in a two-day domestic violence training
program. Surveys were administered both before and after the training
program and focused on knowledge about domestic violence policies and
protocols, attitudes and beliefs about domestic violence, and the
background and experience of the officers. Within six months after the
training, the same participants were contacted to complete a follow-up
survey. This survey included questions about domestic violence
incidents the officers encountered at work, how they worked with
non-law enforcement agencies, and input on future training.

Data Source:

case tracking databases and self-enumerated
questionnaires

Description of Variables:
Variables in Parts 1-3 include location and type of
initial and follow-up contacts, reasons for initial and follow-up
contacts, referral sources, and types of services offered at initial
and follow-up contacts. In Parts 1 and 2, types of services provided
include reporting abuse, filing a Protection from Abuse order, legal
representation, and assistance with court procedures. In Part 3, types
of services provided include pre-sentence investigation, placement on
supervision, and assessment and evaluation. Part 3 also includes
variables on the family and living situation of offenders, as well as
prior criminal history. Variables in Part 4 measured how well officers
knew domestic violence arrest policies, their attitudes toward abused
women and how to handle domestic violence cases, and their opinions
about training. Demographic variables in Part 4 include age, sex,
race, education, and years in law enforcement.

Response Rates:
Parts 1-3: Not applicable. Part 4: The pre- and
post-training surveys had response rates of 100 percent and the
follow-up survey had a response rate of 56 percent.

Presence of Common Scales:
Several Likert-type scales were used in Part 4.

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release: 2001-12-14

Version History:

2006-03-30 File UG3166.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

2006-03-30 File CB3166.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

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